Rubber, meet Road: On starting the dissertation process

So. It is finally upon me! The time to put pen to paper (or in my case tap some keys on the keyboard to throw some stuff called text into a Google Doc) in order to start putting together my dissertation proposal. In some respects I am doing this backwards. I am taking a Research Methods course this summer as a way of getting re-acquainted with some things, and to get better acquainted

Even though this semester is relatively calm, compared to last semester, I still find myself not writing as much as I think I would like. I've set aside, temporarily, the book I was meant to have finished reviewing last October, on MOOCs, until the semester ends and I can focus on them a little more. One reason for the refocus of energies is EDDE 804. We are focusing on leadership in education,

Rhizo16 (planning) has begun...

...and along with it the usual cast of characters and their zany antics (picture a 90s cartoon here).The debate and brainstorming currently happening is how to welcome new members in a new MOOC when we've all started developing connections, bonds, and rhizomes together over the past couple of years. Will anonymity work? New Groups? Delete old groups? Tea & Biscuits to welcome new members?

On simulations

One of the presentations this week in EDDE 803 was from a fellow classmate that talked a bit about simulations. In the ensuing discussion I was reminded of a course I took as part of my MBA which used simulations. I thought that this would be a worthwhile post for here (as well as class) - at the very least it's one chronicle of my learning journey prior to the EdD.Queue flashback visuals

Encouraging students to blog for class...and beyond

A report from the field....Traveling home is a good opportunity to catch up with posts made by fellow #rhizo15 participants. It's also a good time to read books and articles. I thought that for this commute I would go to rhizo because Latour is taking forever to make his point in the Actor-Network Theory book I am reading for another rhizo project.I just read a post, by fellow participation,

Motivating faculty to teach online....errr...coming again?

It seems like I am living in a time-warp this semester :) I had saved an article to read, and respond to, titled "Motivating Faculty to Teach Online" that was published in Inside Higher Education. I could have sworn that I saved this back in the fall at some point, but looking at the date it was earlier this month. I am not sure if time flowing slowly is a good thing or a bad thing. In

New Month, new MOOCs, new learning, more grazing?

September is here! New academic year has begun, the campus is again full of life (and lacking parking), and I am back to school as a student, this time at Athabasca University! I am also looking forward to a number of MOOCs that are beginning this month, among them Connected Courses, which promises to be an interesting cMOOC. Perhaps I am insulting the course by calling it a MOOC (MOOCs

The perils of external rewards

A couple of years ago I was working on hashing out this idea of Academic Check-ins. Think of it as Foursquare meets informal learning meets campus engagement meets alternative credentialing. A paper came out of that brainstorming with a proposal of what such a system might look like. While working on hashing out some ideas I wanted to dive deeper into this concept of motivation, both internal

An initial review of Udemy, from a student's perspective

Udemy is one of those platforms that frequently gets lumped into the "MOOC provider" category. Perhaps, these days, with the term being anything you want it to be, Udemy fits into this category. Over the past few weeks I've been experimenting with their courses to see what Udemy is all about. originally (a year or so ago), when I first went to Udemy I experienced sticker-shock. The

No Walled Gardens badge

Well, we are in Week 9 (or 13) in the course I am teaching this semester, and the badges experiment is continuing! This weekend, as I was reading assignment submissions, I saw that some students, in their design documents, have started incorporating Web 2.0 tools (should we just call them "web tools" now?) that encourage the use, formation, or exploration of personal learning environments

Discussion Kindler Badge - revealed!

Well, it seems one more week has passed by in INSDSG619, and one more badge had been earned by some learners, and therefore revealed to everyone! Last week the Discussion Initiator was revealed, and this week, the Discussion Kinder has come out!Discussion KindlerDescription:This badge is awarded to students who have made an effort to keep the discussion going by responding to peers and helping to tease

Attention splitting in MOOCs

The other day I caught a post by Lenandlar on the #Rhizo14 MOOC which is over, but we amazingly are keeping it going. At the end of his post on motivation that I wanted to address, since they've been on my mind and they've come up a few times in the past week.Are MOOC participants in favor of shorter or longer videos or it doesn’t matter? I can't speak for all MOOC participants, I can

Templates are killing creativity

Cookie cutters: detriment to creativity, or fuel to the creative fire?Last week, while I was updating something on LinkedIn, I saw one of my colleagues post a link to a post by the eLearning Brothers called The Top 10 Best eLearning Game Templates. I am generally not a fan of such list-posts, but every now and again I come across something really interesting. I usually don't teach courses on

Awarding the right thing

scavenged imageI am not sure where I found this blog post (probably through an RSS feed somewhere), but I am glad it came my way. In his initial reflections on the Hyperlinked Library MOOC, this author talk about feeling a bit patronized by earning certain badges. It's like you can't take two steps before someone throws a badge at you and tells you that you're awesome ;-)A while back, when

OLDS MOOC Week 3 done!

Wow, this MOOC seems to be going by pretty quickly! We are already at the midpoint!This week I feel my participation in the MOOC was a bit more muted. I did want to participate more in the in the discussions but I got side-lined with start-of-the-semester things I needed for my day-job ;-) I did get through my stated activities (1, 2, 3, 4, 10) and I did do one of my optional ones (5);

One more MOOC down - xMOOC experince grows

One more MOOC is done! A coursera xMOOC to be more precise called Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society with Karl Ulrich from UPenn.For this course I took the "auditor" approach to participating in the course. I did listen or view (or listen and view) all the lectures, and I did poke around the assignments, but never bothered to submit any of them. I did enjoy Karl Ulrich's presentations,

What is participation? How the LMS determines what you do

It seems like Rebecca and I were on the same wavelength yesterday when we were composing our blog posts and reflecting on various aspects of MOOCs. Rebecca wonders why there is only one level of participation in xMOOCs, and I have to say, having started my 3rd coursera MOOC yesterday (same one as Rebecca, the Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society on coursera), I can see that (from my limited

GameMOOC Weeks 3 & 4

We have now entered week 5 (of 6) of GameMOOC, and I completely forgot to add a quick synopsis of take-aways for the past couple of weeks (time flies!) So here is a quick synopsis of notable things in these two weeks.Week 3: GamificationWeek 3 was all about gamification. There were a number of interesting discussion thread this week, and one of them (which also produced an interesting

Week 1 Recording of BonkOpen viewed - interesting

One of the things that participants need to do in #bonkOpen in order to receive a badge for being part in this MOOC, was to attend (or view the recording of) each weekly live session. I've said it before, and I will say it again: I am not a fan of synchronous conferences; I just don't like sitting there for an hour...or two...or three...listening to people do their thing. I prefer my visual

It's the start of a new MOOC!

Well, actually, it's the start of two new MOOCs!I know that Change11 and DS106 are still going, but change11 seems to be on life support. It seems to me anyway that the same 4-5 people are posting, and even though there are interesting people in these final weeks, most people have moved on, which is too bad. I still read the daily digest, and those 4-5 people post some thought provoking stuff, but

Goal Setting in MOOCs

Last week I had a conversation with Lou McGill, a researcher collecting data for the Change11 MOOC. Our conversation was quite interesting and it seemed to be revolving around learner self-awareness and goal setting. I did take th change MOOC survey, but I have no idea what my responses were when I took it - it seems like such a long time ago (I know I have a copy of the responses, I am just too lazy

Come get your badges!

Rhizomatic Week Achievement in Change11An interesting brainstorm item on gaming, motivation and achievement came up while reading and commenting on Jaap's blog. This particular blog is about badges (or achievements) in MOOCs. Interestingly enough I also saw Dave Cormier's tweet about having a badge on his blog (seemed like a tongue in cheek post). Serious, or not, I've included the image in this post.In